


Afraid to Love Again?

by ancilla89



Category: Blue Bloods (TV)
Genre: F/M, S11E01 TriumphoverTrauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27903250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancilla89/pseuds/ancilla89
Summary: Danny's thoughts after the basement scenes in Season 11, Episode 1, "Triumph Over Trauma"
Relationships: Maria Baez/Danny Reagan
Comments: 9
Kudos: 49





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS for the Season 11 premiere--do NOT read if you have not watched the episode!

**SPOILERS for SEASON 11, EPISODE 1, “TRIUMPH OVER TRAUMA”**

**PLEASE STOP READING HERE IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE SEASON PREMIERE**

* * *

**AUTHOR’S NOTE: After seeing this episode, I may slowly be climbing onto the Danny/Baez/ “Daez” bandwagon. I resisted it for years, but that scene was so heartfelt… But I’m still going to make Danny overthink everything with a little help from my favorite minor character.**

**In S03E17, Baez says that Danny’s known her ten years, so by now it’s almost 18 years.**

Once he was sure his partner was stable, he told his family he had some errands to run—no, he didn’t need to be checked for hypothermia, it hadn’t been _that_ cold in that damn basement—and drove to an all-too-familiar office building.

Ten years ago, he’d have scoffed at the thought of voluntarily seeking out a therapist; but there was something about Dawson…

Doc wasn’t in it for the money or for assigning labels and putting his patients on pills (though he’d been on his share of psychotropic meds, after the Corporal Russell case). Doc freaking cared.

After the usual surprise at seeing him unannounced, Doc got them both hot cocoa.

Danny sipped his, then sat down on the couch and slowly unpacked the 24 hours in the basement with his injured partner, a dead body, and a psychopath lurking…somewhere.

Then he stopped abruptly, stared at his feet. “I think I screwed up. Baez was hurting…she was scared…she…she said she loved me.”

“How did that make you feel?” Doc asked calmly.

He bolted to his feet. “Dammit, Doc! Why do you always have to ask that damn question?”

“Why do you keep coming back when you know I’m going to ask you that?”

He paced the small office rapidly, kicked Doc’s filing cabinet. “I don’t…I don’t know. And don’t give me the ‘ _Yes, you do’_ line! I… Baez probably meant something romantic, and then we couldn’t be partners on the job, and I’d go back to burning through a new partner every six months, and…”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I…I said I loved her too, and maybe I didn’t mean it the…the way she did, but…”

He sighed. He sounded like an idiot. “I…I don’t say those words without meaning them, but it was probably being stuck in a basement for 24 hours getting to me, and I just said it back to her because I…I didn’t want her to maybe…die…thinking…thinking she was alone.”

He shook his head. “When her brother was shot and killed saving her life…she told me I was the only person in her life who she could trust, who’d never disappointed her. I just found out that her damn family—her own f-g FAMILY—didn’t show up when she was promoted to detective third grade. All she has is…the job, and me watching her back.”

“Do you have romantic feelings for your partner?”

He shrugged. “I…I don’t know. We’ve been partners almost eight years, before that, known each other ten. I never looked at another woman that way while Linda was alive, not seriously.”

“And now?”

He punched the wall half-heartedly. “Dammit, Doc, give me some time to figure this out! I don’t…I don’t know.”

“How does that not-knowing make you feel?”

He rubbed his aching knuckles. “Scared $#!+less.”

“What are you afraid of?”

Another question he hated.

He stalked back to his chair, sank into it, drained his mug of hot cocoa. “Twenty-five years on the job, this is the longest I’ve stuck with one partner. The rest got burnt-out dealing with me. If…I can’t lose my partner, not this soon after losing Linda. We…we couldn’t ride together as partners if we… were…in a relationship. It might be an unwritten rule, but there’s a reason for it.”

“Detective Reagan defending an unwritten rule instead of doing his best to walk all over it? I can’t believe my ears,” Doc said teasingly, and Danny glared at him.

“Are you interested in a relationship with Detective Baez?”

“I don’t know, Doc! It’s been…Linda’s been gone three…3 ½ years.”

He stopped, choked by the sudden lump in his throat. He hadn’t realized it had been that long.

“I…it had been…almost two years when I…took off my ring.”

“What are you afraid of?” Doc asked again, and Danny bolted.

* * *

He drove to his partner’s apartment, asked how she was feeling.

She shrugged, adjusted the bag of frozen peas on her knee. “Look, about what I said down there, about you taking your family for granted, about your luck never running out…”

“Forget it,” he said more harshly than he’d planned. Damn, that was the other thing he’d meant to talk to Doc about.

“Dammit, Reagan, I’m trying to apologize!”

“Well, I don’t accept your apology. Not until you accept mine. I’m sorry for blaming you for not calling in our location.”

“Apology accepted.”

“Thanks, yours too,” Danny sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Do you wanna…come see how not-perfect my family is? Join us for Sunday dinner?”

“I…I’d like that,” Baez smiled, and he made her a sandwich and a cup of coffee before leaving to drive around the city until he was too tired to think.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** _**Italicized** _ **quotes are from the script.**

**Also, in my version of Blue Bloods: Danny has been seeing Dr. Dawson since Season 4, Episode 13, Unfinished Business. I don't think he would just go back to Doc in Season 8, Episode 1, without some sort of contact with him over the years. So he's been in therapy, off and on, since the Corporal Russell case.**

With Baez still out line-of-duty, he didn't have to deal with any awkward conversations—or awkward silences. The detective they partnered with him was still wet behind the ears, and thoroughly terrified of him, so he got through that Monday with his reputation as a hothead intact.

At 7:30, he told the kid to scram, they'd pick up the case tomorrow; and he drove to Doc's for his standing 8 p.m. appointment.

"There's something else about the basement I didn't tell you," he said without waiting for any pleasantries.

"Baez thought I blamed her for the…mess we were in, because, according to her, I, quote, ' _get mad whenever anyone questions or doubts me, like with Erin_.'''

"What happened with Erin?"

He told Doc briefly, and the younger man crossed his arms over his chest. "Let me get this straight: you got mad at Erin, so you raced off to follow a lead without notifying next-of-kin, without consulting Detective Baez, **and** without telling your boss where you and Detective Baez were headed?"

"Baez normally tells the boss!"

"You realize you and Detective Baez could have been killed—all because you got angry and distracted!"

"Baez was distracted! She admitted she was having a pity party for her 25-year-old self!"

"And you're the senior detective, so you're supposed to make sure protocols are followed."

He bolted out of the chair. "Now _you're_ gonna chew me out, too? I thought you were supposed to be impartial, I thought this was supposed to be a safe space for me to talk about $#!"

"I'm just trying to make sure I understand exactly what led to you and Detective Baez getting locked in that basement. And you're not a spoiled twenty-something who needs a 'safe space.' Unchecked emotions…like anger or self-pity…often lead to disaster; you or your partner could have been killed."

"A psychopathic serial killer pushed my partner down the stairs and locked us in the basement—that's what led to it! It had nothing to do with emotions! It was just bad luck! Wrong place, wrong time!"

"Which could have been avoided if you had made sure the boss knew where you and Detective Baez were going."

Danny stood up so fast, his chair fell over. He stormed out of the office, barreled down the stairs, and out into the street.

He walked the deserted streets until he was exhausted, then went back to his car.

Doc, damn his stubborn nature, was sitting in his car next to him. "I tried calling you."

"Didn't you get the hint that I'm done?"

"I'm still gonna bill you for the full hour, so let's finish our last forty minutes, Danny."

"No way in hell, if you're gonna keep telling me it's my fault we ended up in the basement."

"I won't. But there's a lot we still need to talk about, and you know it, Danny."

He cursed, and followed Doc back inside.

He didn't even bother sitting down, just walked straight to the window and stood staring out into the night. "I was…trying to keep her awake, because she'd hit her head. Told her about me before… before Joe died. The jokester."

Baez wasn't the only person who would never think of him as a jokester. He hoped Doc didn't make some smart-ass comment.

But Dawson stayed quiet, and Danny shoved his hands into his pockets. " _After Joe was killed, I…I promised myself I'd never let my guard down. And now everyone—on the job, and in my family—thinks of me as the hothead_. They don't realize…"

He cleared his throat roughly, cursed the sudden lump in his throat, tears pricking his eyes. "All I'm trying to do is make sure I don't lose anyone else I love."

"Speaking of love…why did you say you 'screwed up' by telling Detective Baez you loved her?"

He wanted to bolt—again. "That's not what I came here to talk about."

"But we're going to talk about it, Danny. Stop deflecting. I promise we'll end after you talk about that."

"Remind me why I'm paying you $100/session for this?"

"Because you know it helps. You've made a lot of progress since 2013, Danny. Now, why do you think you screwed up?"

Doc had a point—talking had helped, after the Corporal Russell case, after Linda's death, after a million things in between those two pivotal events.

He sighed, stalked back to his chair, and sat down, staring at his feet. "Because it'll ruin the working relationship we have now. I mean, sure, Jamie and Eddie made it work, but they're young, they talk about stuff."

"And you don't?"

He glared at Doc. "If I liked talking about my feelings, again, I would do it at my family dinner table instead of paying you $100 to torture them out of me."

"Sorry you feel that way about me, Danny."

He shrugged. "I invited Baez over to family dinner yesterday."

"Wow. That's…an honor. But again, that's not what we need to focus on here."

He ignored Doc.

"Baez accused me of having a perfect family, of taking them for granted. When she said her family didn't even come to her promotion to detective…I just wanted her to see what my family's like. It's not all sunshine and roses; Joe was murdered, Linda was murdered; but we're there for each other when we need to be, funerals and promotion ceremonies both."

"How did that make you feel, Baez accusing you of taking your family for granted?"

He shook his head, stood up, exhausted. "I don't know. And I need to talk to Baez about it, before I talk to you. Good night, Doc."

He drove home, and dreamed of helicopter crashes and Linda, stairs and Baez, bullets and Joe.


End file.
